


Wavelengths

by seren_ccd



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2428832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seren_ccd/pseuds/seren_ccd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was another reason why Dana Scully didn't go to Luther Boggs' execution.  Season One, post-ep for Beyond the Sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wavelengths

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know where this came from, but I had the urge to write a conversation between sisters. Written for the xf_is_love month happening now on LiveJournal.

Dana looked around the brightly lit diner and began to regret coming inside, but knew that staying in that depressing and dark motel room would have been worse.

She checked the clock on the wall for the eighth time in the last three minutes and once again forced herself to look away. The darkness of the night outside reflected the inside of the diner perfectly in the window and for a moment she watched the cook in the back flip beef patties methodically before he slid them onto slightly flattened buns, dropping limp lettuce leaves and pale tomato slices on top.

He dinged a bell with a flat slap of his hand and the waitress slowly walked over to grab the plates, then, still slowly, she walked them over to the two men in fluorescent work jackets sitting at the table in the corner. 

Dana looked away when the men started to eat and she took a sip of her overly bitter coffee. 

She glanced at the clock again.

Then she closed her eyes and rubbed the space between her eyes, her fingers causing a sharp sting of pain that made her blink furiously.

Thirty minutes to go. If she left now, she’d just be able to make to the prison. She could go and talk to a murderer who could channel her father before said murderer was executed.

The thought made the coffee in her stomach threaten to come back up.

She dropped her hand from her forehead and looked out the window again. The cook was now slouched in the back doorway smoking a cigarette.

 _What am I doing here?_ she thought knowing that she referred to more than just sitting in a dingy diner at 11.30 at night. It referred to _everything_.

Her eyes crept back to the clock, but before she could make out the time, her phone rang. Dana jumped.

Her hands fumbled the phone a little as she pulled it from her pocket. “Scully.”

There was a pause and then she heard, “Dana?”

“Missy,” she breathed. “Did Mom-“

“I just got off the phone with her,” her sister said hurriedly. “Oh, God, Dana. I'm just... Are you okay?”

Dana sighed and squinted at the reflection on the window. “Not really. Are you? _Where_ are you?”

“Sweden,” Melissa said. “I’m at a retreat. There’s only one phone and, well… I’m okay, I think. I don’t think I believe he’s really gone.”

“I know,” Dana said turning the coffee mug around slowly with her free hand. “But he is.”

“He was always so big in my mind,” Melissa continued. “Almost immoveable. Like, oh, like the Appalachian mountains or something. Remember that trip through the Smokies?”

Dana smiled a little. “The one where Charlie decided he was going to be a ventriloquist and we threatened to tape his mouth shut to stop him from trying to talk out of the side of his mouth?”

“And Bill dropped the cooler of sandwiches into the Nantahala,” Missy added. “Good times, right?”

“Yes,” Dana said, smile dropping from her face and her chest burning with emotion. “They were.”

Melissa was quiet and then she said, “Yes, you’re right, they were.”

They didn’t say anything else and Dana listened to the crackle of the line between them. She imagined a deep blue line that stretched across the Atlantic connecting her to her sister and, wildly, she wanted to know what Missy was wearing, if she still smelled of mint and lemon verbena like she had the last time they met. She wanted her family around her, whole and happy and...

“You missed the funeral,” she said eventually.

“How was it?” Melissa asked.

“A bit unorthodox,” Dana admitted. “You would have liked it. It was just Mom and me and the boys and their families.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Are you?”

“Honestly?” Melissa asked clearly ignoring the sharp tone that had crept into Dana’s voice. “Yes and no. I’ll say ‘good-bye’ to him in my own way. I’ll go to the sea tomorrow, I think. I think he would have appreciated the sea here. They tell me maneuvering through the archipelagos can be really tricky and –“

“I saw him,” Dana said quickly. Her eyes widened. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“What?” Melissa asked.

Dana took a deep breath. “I saw him. The night he died, I saw Dad.”

“Mom told me they had dinner at your place,” Melissa said slowly.

“No, not that,” Dana said shaking her head and staring at the half-empty cup of coffee. “I saw him later that night. I was asleep on the couch and I woke up and Dad was sitting in my armchair. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear his voice.” She closed her eyes and said the rest quickly. “Then the phone rang and it was Mom telling me he was gone.”

The line was silent.

Dana waited. Then she said, “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Melissa said hurriedly. “Yes, I’m here. _Dana_.”

"Never mind," she said quickly. "Just ignore me. It's nothing."

"It's not 'nothing', sis," Melissa said. "I'm going to go ahead and assume you've already gone through all the logical reasons why this couldn't have happened and just jump straight into it. Dana, you saw him?"

"I don't know what I saw," she said looking at the reflection in the window again. The cook had moved on to pancakes for the teenagers at the counter and she could smell the batter as it cooked. "I don't think I want to know. It's probably just stress, Missy."

"Really?" Melissa said flatly. "You see our father the night he died and you think it's stress?"

"Work has been challenging lately," Dana said knowing she was taking the coward's way out. "Just drop it. Please. I don't know why I said anything."

"Probably because you haven't told anyone. You've just bottled it up and worried away at it in your determined, scientific way; which hasn't given you any actual answers and so you're frustrated to all hell," Melissa said. "Plus, I'm an ocean away so you don't have to put up with my beliefs in person."

Dana frowned. "You make me sound horrible."

"Well, you're very intimidating in your skepticism, little sister," she said, but Dana could hear the smile in her voice. "Dana. You told me because I'd get it. That's all."

"Well, I'm glad one of us 'gets it', because I don't," she said watching the progress of the pancakes from the kitchen to the counter.

"You loved him," Melissa said simply. "The two of you always had a connection. It was deeper than mine was with him. God, the pair of you could just sit in the same room, not talking, but still somehow _communicating_ for hours."

"That doesn't make any sense," she said although she remembered those afternoons when Ahab was on shore leave and Dana would take her homework into his study and work while he read. Sometimes they'd talk, or she'd read him something from one of her textbooks, but most of the time, they'd just _be_. Oh, God, it hurt. His loss was a huge hole in her heart and she ached with loneliness. 

But she didn't say anything to Melissa. 

"You two were just on this wavelength I could never reach," Melissa said. "I envied you." She chuckled. "Well, up until I realized that being Dad's favorite meant I had to ace calculus and physics. I didn't envy you after that."

Dana managed a soft laugh. "Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure I managed to disappoint him in the end."

"Oh, now, hold on," Melissa said. "Don't you dare throw yourself a pity party over that, Dana Katharine. So, you didn't become a famous doctor. You followed your instincts and while I still can't believe you work for the friggin' FBI, what you do saves lives. You get to use that big brain of yours to solve mysteries. Plus, you love it." She paused. "You still love it, right?"

"Parts of it," she said the image of Mulder's blood painted on that white cross flashed behind her eyes.

"Dad respected people who went after what they wanted," Melissa said. "He never got what I believe, what I am, and he was always the first to start an argument. But he never criticized the fact that I work hard at what I believe in. Never."

"No, he never did, did he?" she said rubbing at a spot on the formica table.

"Come on, Dana," Melissa said. "He was our _father_."

Melissa's inadvertent echoing of her mother's words made Dana close her eyes as memories of her childhood rippled like waves in her mind.

"I'm really sad, Missy," Dana whispered. 

"So am I, little sis," Melissa whispered back. "I wish we could be on that trip again, up to our knees in freezing water, laughing so hard at Bill while Dad tries to scold him and keep a straight face."

"So do I," Dana said opening her eyes. She looked up at the clock.

12.07am.

She missed Bogg's execution.

She's not sorry at all.

She took another breath and said, "It must be so late where you are."

"Or early," Melissa said, "depending on how you look at it. I might go for a walk, actually. See the sea."

"Sounds like a nice idea," Dana said smiling.

"You said work was challenging," Melissa said. "What's it really like, being a special agent?"

"Oddly unorthodox at times," Dana said wryly. "Again, you might like it."

"I highly doubt that, Agent Scully," Melissa said.

"Come to Washington, soon, okay?" she said. "I'd like to see you."

"Soon, I promise," her sister said. "I love you, Dana. Be well, okay?"

"I will. I love you, too. Say 'hello' to the sea for me," she said.

"Aye, aye, Starbuck."

And then she was gone.

Dana put her phone back into her pocket and stared at the clock. She didn't regret not going. She really didn't. She did, however, regret her choice in diners as a group of drunk people stumbled in the door, their loud voices bouncing off the walls and window.

She dropped some money on the table and left. The air was damp outside, with a sharp, cold breeze that smelled like snow. She hurriedly got into her rental car and turned it on. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to that motel room and be alone with her conflicting beliefs.

It occurred to her that she didn't have to.

She headed towards the hospital and towards her partner.


End file.
